Biography
During the closing years of the 1970s, Brenda Ray launched her musical path from a base in North West England amid the post-punk scene, working under assorted aliases while fusing gritty punk textures with danceable pulses and reggae accents. She generated homemade recordings within the loose Liverpudlian network Naffi, appearing as Naffi Sandwich and Brenda & the Beach Balls. A number of singles reached the public on an extremely limited regional basis across the first half of the 1980s. In the mid-1990s Ray aided reggae producers Sir Freddie Viadukt and Roy Cousins with the reissue of material from Cousins’ Tamoki Wambesi label. The undertaking prompted her to track her own pieces, draping vocals, melodica, and assorted embellishments across vintage roots reggae rhythms drawn from the archived tapes. Work continued from 1995 until 2005 and yielded the 2006 underground favorite Walatta, an acclaimed fusion of lovers rock rhythms and displaced dreaminess. In 2012 a survey of her initial post-punk output appeared as the compilation D'Ya Hear Me!: Naffi Years, 1979-1983.
Albums
